Tempura Batters
Every time I make tempura I've been trying a different recipe in search of that perfect batter...
I'm looking for light and crispy with good texture retention, and my search got off to a reasonable start
with the Eldorado
Sushi evening,
using a fairly simple recipe from
Thai and South-East Asian Food & Cooking
containing baking powder and egg. A good textured batter, but could be crispier.
Next up,
Squid Tempura
with a batter mix from
Flavour First
using baking powder and no egg. Also a reasonable batter, but could have been crisper.
On to
Lemon Risotto with Tempura Oysters
and this time a very simple recipe from
The Eastern & Oriental Cookbook
using just plain flour, cornflour and sparkling water. An equally good batter,
which I think could probably be made more effective with a bit of practice, using
real water instead of my Cava(!) and better temperature control.
The latest recipe I tried was by far the worst which I found randomly on the
internet
(yep, it serves me right)
and uses egg yolk, and baking powder. This produced a dense heavy batter which lost any crispness almost immediately. I think using egg yolk is a mistake.
Apart from working more with the Eastern & Oriental recipe, I'm wondering if whisking in egg white might help to produce crispy batter?
I've been trying Cava straight from the freezer in my batters, which might be good, but might not.
I could try other sparkly liquids I suppose (yeah, even water), other flour combinations (some rice flour?)
and it's also possible I'm making the batter too thick, so some experimentation there too.
Definitely the crispiest batter so far - 50/50 mix (by weight) of rice flour and cornflour,
mixed with near-frozen soda water from a bottle straight out of the freezer.
In fact, it looks like you can go
too crispy - this batter was so crispy it was actually hard!
You can moderate this a little by thinning the batter with more soda water,
but I think I may have to roll back the crispiness a touch.
Plus it was somewhat anaemic-looking - almost completely white.
I could try something like a third plain/rice/corn flour? I liked the soda water though...
This time I went for the one-third mix of plain/rice/corn flours (by weight) with iced soda water.
I put a little of the dry flour mixture to one side to roll the tempura ingredients (in this case, prawns and scallops)
in before putting them in the batter.
The result was
quite good - less hard and sharp than the previous 50/50 version,
and taking on a nicer wheat colour when cooked. I also thought the flavour of the batter itself was a little better.
On the other hand it
could have been a bit more crispy,
and our contents had a tendency to slide out of their little batter pockets
(though to be fair, that could have been down to the fact that I got them from a supermarket so they were less than fresh,
and getting a bit watery).
A pretty good batter, Rachel liked that last (50/50) one better, but I preferred this one.
I think I'd go for slightly less plain flour. Something like 40/40/20.
Might be better to pre-dust the ingredients with a non-plain flour mixture too. Say pure cornflour?
Fed what seemed like an army of children, with a vast variety of ingredients.
Some of our vegetables were maybe cut a little large - aim for more bite-sized:
- fresh peeled prawns
- oysters
- chunks of cod and haddock (the fat piece of cod fillet was nicest to prepare - no bones, thicker fillet and held together better)
- use small button mushrooms or half/quarter them
- angle cut courgettes, slice them in half/quarters if they are more than a couple of inches thick
- broccoli florets are already a good size
- ½" slices across the whole onion, we tried rings, but I didn't think they really worked.
Maybe try and get just two rings from a slice so you don't have quite so much onion. Or you could try quartering smaller onions.
The batter was more of a 40/40/20 batter corn/rice/plain by weight. Maybe slightly light on the corn.
Wonder what the volume ratios are? I'll have to check that out - rice flour seems to be half the density of plain
and cornflour half again, so something like 8/4/1 by volume?
Again I used iced soda water, and this time I chilled the whole bowl of mixed flours in the freezer beforehand too.
To be honest though, when you mix the batter by pouring in the soda water
it doesn't seem possible to leave unmixed dry floury bits the way you are supposed to.
Perhaps I need to try adding the flour to the liquid? That needs getting the quantity of liquid just right though!
I used a plate of pure cornflour for pre-rolling the tempura this time.
Definitely closing in on my ideal batter - this was crispywith good retention without being hard, coloured up nicely and had a good flavour.
Rachel still prefers the 50/50 mix, but I'm pretty happy with this.
I was also happy with the wasabi/mayonnaise/crème fraîche dip!
Tempura Batter Number 8
ingredient veg vegan
Finally. The perfect batter.
- 80g corn flour
- 80g rice flour
- 40g plain flour
- 150ml frozen vodka
- 150ml near-frozen soda water
Freeze the vodka and leave the soda water bottle in the freezer until it's on the edge of freezing solid.
Weigh out the flours and combine them. Chill the flours and their bowl too, if you can be bothered.
The liquid quantities are only approximate - start with the vodka and add as much soda water as necessary
to create a nice thick gloopy batter. Stir roughly with chopsticks, but don't overdo it. A few lumps are good.
It's best to add the flour to the liquid, but it's hard to get the quantities right that way.
Mix the batter up immediately before using it, and don't make more than you can use up fairly quickly
so the gluten doesn't soften and the batter lose it's crispness.
Have a shallow bowl of rice flour to roll moist ingredients (like seafood) in before coating them with batter.
This quantity will make enough batter to feed about 4 people if they aren't
too hungry,
or 3 if they are.
Deep-fry in peanut or sunflower oil at 170°C (340°F) for vegetables, 175°C (350°F) for seafood.
The tempuras will sink, fizzing, then float to the surface when cooked.
I also tried this version with a dry Japanese beer (Sapporo) instead of the soda water,
and that worked OK too, but I still think the soda water is better.
It's slightly difficult to tell, because I also filled a soda syphon with the mixture
(following one of Heston Blumenthal's ideas for fish batter)
keeping it in the fridge for 30 minutes until needed,
but I still think making the batter immediately before using it is best.
Isn't cooking great? You get to eat your mistakes. Yummy.